Little Things
by Thanfiction
Summary: Sometimes it's not the devil in the details.


They'd maxed out four credit cards so far at the nearest three WalMarts and Home Depots, mostly repairing water damage where the cement had cracked or caulking leaked over the years, along with half a century of general maintenance. There'd been general setting up house, too, stocking cleaning supplies and toilet paper, filling the pantry, buying modern appliances and adapting the wiring so Sam's delicate, beloved laptop could suck juice from the take no prisoners oldschool generators. Had to convert those, too, just like he and Dad had needed to switch Baby over when it became too hard to find the original leaded, no ethanol hard stuff.

It had been easy to slip things in the carts and bags without Sam noticing. Most of the time, he'd not even been there; they took turns, switched things up so that they wouldn't get too well known anywhere. Gigantic dude with Farrah Fawcett hair buying thirty rolls of duct tape might as well be a regular by the second trip.

Wasn't anything that would stand out on the receipts, either, if Sam had even bothered to look. Might as well have been buying them for himself. If he was honest, he kind of was. It was a stupid idea, really. Not even an idea, more a set of impulses connected to superstitions connected to memories of something that hadn't happened yet and maybe never had and hopefully never would.

But that stagger in the hallway of the warehouse after ganking a nothing demon. The look in Cas' eyes when he said he was afraid he'd kill himself. How he'd curled up in fear - No, panic! this angel who'd pulled him from hell and faced Lucifer and Molotov cocktailed Michael and misted Raphael and sixtuple crossed the king of hell and Frodo-fied a Horseman had been panicking! - when they were trying to rescue Samandriel. What he'd done to that poor kid and the trickle of blood from those too-blank eyes.

The silence since.

And there wasn't a damned thing he could do.

Well, except beg.

Which had amounted to exactly squat. Even though he'd swallowed his pride and done it with all his heart. More than once. Nightly.

He told himself…well, he told himself a lot of things. Most of them weren't great scenarios, and too many of them involved Never Again and a knot in the base of his stomach that felt like it had been dragged from somewhere icy and thick and rotting. Some of them were vengeance fantasies against whatever had taken his friend. But even the most optimistic had stopped believing he would just come back okay.

Come back, maybe, and maybe it was paranoia or maybe it was some kind of wierd instinct, but he couldn't shake the thought of the similarity of the way Cas' eyes had been broken over his brother's body and the same empty blue scream he'd seen with a ragged beard and the cloying scent of enough pot to knock out Bob Marley. He remembered Anna, remembered Cas right after they'd had their brief encounter with his meatsuit's original operating system. Dean shivered. That family was a little more Manson than Mayberry.

There wasn't a reason he could put his finger on, but he'd found himself slipping the items in, one by one. An extra toothbrush. Deodorant. Socks. A pair of jeans in 32x32 tucked beneath his own 34x34 like they'd been a mistake. Slowly, they accumulated, first in a small pile at the back of his closet, then he appropriated a duffle that had once held the giant wads of rags and towels they'd used to clean up juicy jobs.

Just in case, he told himself. Because he'd learned the value of it all too recently himself, and he wasn't going to repeat future him's mistakes. He'd be there, and if Cas had been kicked out, it wouldn't matter. Hell, it'd probably be better, because they didn't get him there any more. Dean did. He understood. Down to the roadrunner pajamas that he knew would bring a smile and a second TV remote. A desk set up where Cas could sit up all night without technically watching him sleep, but also a second set of bedsheets and an extra mattress tucked in a storage closet. Memory foam.

It was the little things. Stupid things. But they made him feel like he was doing something, talismans and rituals of hope that still held enough jaded pessimism not to feel silly or completely useless. Creating places in his life for everyone that mattered so he could turn them into fortresses if need be, because they were so close, so close to he didn't even know what, but he could almost taste it, and it was something so much like things he didn't dare shape into words.

And maybe he didn't get to close the gates, but he could still do what he did best, what he'd always done best. Saving people. Hunting things. And this time, no one got fed to the meat grinder. This time, no matter what he had to do, they were all coming home.

This time, he had a home of his own. This time, no one would burn.


End file.
